


Reasons For Humming

by sprinklyzucchini



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: F/F, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Tiny bits of Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-08
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-20 09:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2424005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprinklyzucchini/pseuds/sprinklyzucchini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A one-shot of how they turned from polite acquaintances to friends to lovers and all that. <br/>Also, Jem's a lovesick fool. And research is of utmost importance.</p>
<p>Also, I'm bullshit at summaries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reasons For Humming

**Author's Note:**

> This... Uh, I didn't ship them until I wrote this (it was mostly Jem/Lisa for me) and then... yeah. An off-shoot of Five Times that I ended up writing in under an hour because I couldn't concentrate on the last chapter and got distracted. *slaps head* Funny little noggin I've got.
> 
> Un-betaed, and Idk I'm shit with describing something as delicate as friends-to-lovers in one shots. 
> 
> Lemme know what you think, though *crouches and holds pillow up in defense*

Jem was humming ( _humming! Did she ever hum?_ ) while walking back to her house. Her jacket was crumpled, shirt buttoned up the wrong way (but it wasn’t very noticeable), her hair standing up on its ends. She knew, also, that her smile and what she imagined to be a ‘twinkle’ in her eyes would probably give her away. If no one noticed that giant, ill-concealed mark on her throat. But she didn’t care. It was nearing evening, and people rarely looked this happy while coming back from school. Which she wasn’t, not exactly. She’d taken a detour to Char’s.

Ah, there it was. The reason Jemima Walker was humming as though she didn’t have a fuckton of homework to do or a Math and Stats test to study for.

Yeah okay, screw the homework. Screw the test, too. She was more interested in research. Just a bit of this and that. She had a hunch that Char had had experience, and therefore, knew. But she didn’t. So she’d have to remedy that.

Maybe she’d get on the test and homework afterwards. Maybe.

__

She hadn’t seen it coming. In the early days of their (very fragile and already strenuous) friendship, they’d been nothing more than cordial.   
Then something had shifted when Jem found Charlotte in the girl’s toilets, bunking History and spending the time dry-sobbing miserably. Jem had been afraid of saying anything to comfort her and buggering it up instead, but as it turned out, all she had to do was listen. She’d listened as Charlotte, apparently in a state of despondency, mumbled stories about her father. And talked (vaguely, but Jem could still hazard a guess to the whole situation) about her mother.

Jem had discovered newfound respect for this girl. Hearing about her father, and the losses in her family had done nothing to abate the terrible feeling of guilt. She’d kept quiet as Charlotte leaned against her shoulder, thinking she’d had every right to be angry at Jem that time.

They’d become better friends after that. After they’d established that there wouldn’t be any sort of half-arsed pity on either’s behalf or anything of the sort. That had worked well.

They traded music and books. Jem (reluctantly! Okay not really.) admitted she looked good in purple. Char constantly pestered Jem to lend her new albums, and to read the stuff she gave her. And Jem liked it.

She noticed, but couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when Charlotte became Char.

When Jem had woken up one night, on one of their rare sleep(study)overs, sweating and gulping in half the air in her room and Char had immediately held her, still groggy and messy-haired from sleep. She’d whispered vague stuff in her ear, most of it nonsense, really – quotes and whatnot. Jem had listened to the sleepy tilt in her voice, sort of nasal and grumbly, but had found it incredibly soothing. 

Char had looked at her, trying to attempt to calm her down by eye contact, and good heavens, did it work. Jem had started to try to figure out the colour of her eyes. _Her eyes_ , for cripe’s sake. If that wasn’t a big neon sign, she didn’t know what was.

Before she went off to sleep nestled against the crook of her neck, she was sure her last thought had probably been, _Fuck, I’ve got it bad._

She didn’t know why Char didn’t complain when they woke up the next morning, with Jem sprawled out half on top of her and sort-of cuddled up at the same time. Maybe she didn’t mind. Maybe... Yeah, no, she probably didn’t mind, that’s all.

Jem initially panicked, and then told her impending crisis to go fuck itself sideways, because she had enough stress to be going on with, in the first place. Besides, she’d decided she wouldn’t deny herself like this, like she had with Lisa. That had been nothing but a major angst ride and she’d pushed it far back in her subconscious, where it made rare and horrible occurrences in her nightmares.

And she’d seen Kier, confident in himself, happy and in love with the man who’d helped him along.

Just figures, that her bro would be the one to give her relief about that. She inwardly grumbled at the thought of owing the idiot who was apparently determined to make her scorch her eyes out these days.

Not that Jem _loved_ Char or anything. Cor, that was too heavy a word. Jem couldn’t deny the possibility, but that’s all it was. She pushed all of it deep down, anyway.

She’d went on as if nothing happened. Like she hadn’t slowly come to the realization that she really, _really_ liked her friend. She had more important stuff to deal with. Her headaches, school (surprisingly, they weren’t correlated), not walking in on her brother and Simon, and blah.

And she’d never seen Char ever dating or expressing interest in anyone, and she’d felt something was a little off about that – like Char wasn’t telling her something, but that didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t. She must’ve had a bad experience like Jem did with Gary – not the relationship, the aftermath of it. Who knew, honestly.

She wouldn't raise her hopes up like that. Never did her any good.

She’d taken to tugging the bracelet Char gave her whenever she was upset. It comforted her.

And today, she’d gone straight over to Char’s from school (Jem still couldn’t believe she was trusted enough to be in the Reigns household, because Char obviously didn’t like to draw attention to her mother.) They’d doubled over laughing, all over again, at some silly incident in the hallway (the details were forgotten, but they were still laughing), and at Jem’s (highly embellished) story about Kier dropping hot sauce all over himself at dinner and yelping like a puppy, yada yada yada.

Char’s dark auburn hair had fallen loose from her already messy braid, one of her hoops was half-dangling off her ear, and she smudged her eyeliner as she wiped tears of mirth with one hand. Still gasping for breath and grinning.

Jem had stopped thinking about the initial topic of conversation, for what felt like ages ago. To say she’d kept it subtle these past few days would be an understatement. She was okay with what she felt, but she was dismayed that it was only growing instead of ebbing – anyway, she did a master job dealing with and hiding it.

She’d been so distracted looking at Charlotte’s lips that she didn’t notice the other’s eyes lingering on her own.

They were in the hallway of her house, alone (obviously), and Jem was struggling with all her might not to give in to temptation and snog Char senseless. She had a lot of self control. She had a lot of practice. _Why the fuck wasn’t it working. Why did she have it so bad?_

Turns out, she hadn’t had to go through the trouble.

Because one moment she was half-glaring at Char’s lips (for being so distracting, and shiny, and downright kissable), and the next moment those lips were on hers.

_Well, this solves that teensy bit of a problem,_ Jem thought, frozen to the spot. Watery knees, fireworks, stars, dizziness – all of the embellished metaphors made sense now. She hadn’t known they would. It was nothing, _nothing_ , like Gary.

Before she knew it, she was kissing back, hunger coursing through every cell in her body where it outpoured in her mouth devouring Char’s, her hands tangled and clawing in her hair, her body straining to be as close to hers as possible. Char gave as good as she got back.

They barely made it to her room. Jem had eyeliner on her nose and left cheek, and Char had it all around her face, and she’d never looked more beautiful – lips now shiny with their spit, red and swollen because of Jem’s ministrations (she’d have to keep doing that, she couldn’t ever stop doing that.) Her hair was half out of the braid now, and stood up on her scalp or tumbled onto her shoulder. Their jackets were shrugged off somewhere along the way, and they’d loosened their ties to breathe.

Minutes later found them on the bed, Char whispering how amazing Jem was and Jem reciprocating the sentiment via kisses and bites against her pale throat.

And then she moved up and swallowed Char’s little stuttering gasps and moans, rolled them over so Char was on top, wrapping a leg around her waist.

They stopped, nearly panting, in blissed-out stasis.

Okay, _maybe_ , they were going a bit too fast. Jem’s mind was clearing a bit of its fog of lust, and she noticed their shirts were halfway open too. Char’s had slipped down her shoulder. Light freckles dusted the top of her shoulder, and Jem traced them in fascination, as they disappeared beneath her bra strap and continued on her back. She curled her fingers at the nape of her neck, stroking the hair there. Char made a noise akin to purring. Her breath was hot and damp against Jem’s jaw, and she nudged them so they could tilt their heads to look at each other.

Jem (reluctantly) took her leg off Char’s waist and, repositioning them so they were sideways and facing each other, she looked into hazel (Green? Dark blue? All of them combined?) eyes and grinned.

Char snorted in mirth. “My, don’t _you_ look smug.”

“I just made out with the most gorgeous girl in Roarton, ‘course I’m smug.” Jem teased back.

“I wouldn’t go that far, now.”

“Yeh were supposed to say ‘No, Jem, _you’re_ the most gorgeous.’” She propped up on an elbow, and traced Char’s peeking collarbone with a finger, shit-eating grin on her face. She was deliriously happy. It was disconcerting.

Char stuck her tongue out and said, “Please. Especially since I know yeh don’t care about how gorgeous yeh look. Which is, a lot.” She murmured the last bit as she reached a hand up to the back of Jem’s neck, pulling her down for a kiss. This one was slower, languid and easy, and Jem’s toes curled in her socks.

She pulled back. “I wanted you. For a long time.” She was blushing now. Honest-to-God blushing. _Jesus, what had this girl done to her._

Char just smiled. “Would yeh believe me if I said that I liked yeh ever since... ever since _that_ day?”

It was only ever called ‘that’ day.

Jem gaped. “That long, huh?”

“May or may not have been longer.” Char paused. “I’m queer.” She stated, with the air of someone announcing that there’s stew for dinner.

Jem stared.

“But that’s not only why I like yeh, of course, I mean, I’ve known that I was queer since sixteen, so- Jem? Are you alri- Wait, if yer, uhm.” She sat up. “If yeh are uncomfortable with this or something, then...I dunno, maybe we could forget-” She continued, scratching the back of her head, a blush creeping up her face.

“No! No, God no, I’m just- no, I’m not having a crisis. I was, uh- I didn’t know ye were queer, is all. I didn’t let meself imagine it, put it off as wishful thinking.”

“I put off telling you ‘cuz I wasn’t sure how yeh’d react.”

“Jesus, Char, and to think we’ve been dancing ‘round each other for weeks now. Just fer the record, you know my brother’s gay, right? Complete with a zombie boyfriend and all?”

Char chuckled, her eyes crinkling. “No, I know, I just wasn’t sure if yeh’d be quite so comfortable spending time with me if... if yeh knew. And I wasn’t planning on telling ye ‘bout my feelings. Not anytime soon.” She looked down, and started picking off lint on her skirt.

“Oh. Well, I’m not complaining that yeh didn’t go through with tha’ ‘plan’, then.”

They were on the way to half-dressed, with three of Jem’s buttons open, and Char’s shirt hanging off one shoulder, and they’d been snogging not two minutes ago – and here they were, dishevelled and messy, fretting about obviously-not-unrequited feelings.

Char looked sad, and she wished she could kiss that tiny frown away. She settled instead, for putting her hand on top of hers, stroking her knuckles with her thumb.

Char continued. “I knew you wouldn’t have a problem with me being gay, but if you knew that I liked you... It hasn’t gone down very well before, this sort of thing.” She said, softly, hesitant to talk about what hadn’t ‘gone down very well’. Jem wondered, her chest tightening at the look that memory brought on Char’s face, but decided she didn’t need to know, not when Char was obviously so distressed about it.

“S’okay, Char. I’m here now.” Char looked up at that. “Yeah, yeah y’are.” She repeated, looking momentarily disbelieving of the whole situation. And then she smiled, and reached out. “C’mere.”

So Jem did.

__

And if the tune that Jem was currently humming was the one they’d put on later and ‘danced’ (which was, jumping around with flying limbs) and then made out (Again.) to – well, it wasn’t anybody’s business, was it?


End file.
